In a Legacy Grand Prix, Albert playing Brainstorm on his turn, while Niels has Leovold,
Emissary of Trest in play. Niels says “No answers”, and Albert's hand starts moving towards his library. You are watching the game, for whatever reason, and you have a pretty clear idea of what is about to happen. When should you intervene:
- as soon as you see Albert's hand touching the cards (GRV);
- when the cards have left the library, but before they touched Albert's hand (L@EC);
- when the cards are in Albert's hand (HCE)?

I'd assume that you would have to let the error occur as the effect is controlled by their opponent and so they are responsible for ensuring that the effect is applied properly, if you step in at step 1 the opponent hasn't yet had the opportunity to step in to stop it and may in fact have done this multiple times during the tournament to gain advantage. I'd let the Hce resolve and then ftmgs or possibly a grv to their opponent as it's their effect.

Depending on how my reflexes are quick at the moment, I will try to stop the player as soon as “LEC movement” of cards is done. For me, that is the first moment when an infraction occurs. I would not penalize the player with GRV just for touching the library…

Originally posted by Christopher Windmill:

may in fact have done this multiple times during the tournament to gain advantage

If this comes out during the investigation, it starts to look interesting. Almost cheating borderline (depending on the fact whether the nonactive player does this fishing for HCE intentionally and whether they are aware that they should call out any breaking of a rule in their games as soon as possible).

I am personnally stopping the player when the card starts to be seen. It is difficult to accurately give GRV when a player touches his Library. I usually wait for a player to really make tehe mistake AND for the opponent to miss to prevent the mistake if possible.
In this case, the reasonable line for me is when he starts looking at the card but I am sure to try to avoid any very impactful fixes such as the one for the HCE.
I value a lot letting players play their match as organically as possible and this solution seems the one that complies the most with what I think is right.

The very first paragraph of the IPG covers this under General Philosophy. In particular it says:

A judge shouldn’t intervene in a game unless he or she believes a rules violation has occurred…

and

Judges don’t stop play errors from occurring, but instead deal with errors that have occurred…

So I would stop the player when they commit L@EC.

Note - if the player pulls 3 cards face down onto the table, but in the process changes the order, I'll intervene, as players can't just change the order of their library on a whim. e.g. if the player counts cards out one at a time, putting the top card on the table, then the second card on top, and the third on top of that. So the cards are in the order 3,2,1 instead of 1,2,3.

As others have said, I don't believe touching cards in the library is a GRV. Depending on when this is caught, it's always going to be either LEC or HCE.

Originally posted by Christopher Windmill:

I'd assume that you would have to let the error occur as the effect is controlled by their opponent and so they are responsible for ensuring that the effect is applied properly

Leovold's ability isn't a trigger, Albert isn't allowed to try and see if Niels forgets about it. Both players are responsible for maintaining a legal game state.

Would we consider this HCE if AP said “Draw 3” before executing his Brainstorm? That would change the “first opportunity” for NAP, so we could be looking at a double GRV instead. Would that also change when you intervened (if your super-judge reflexes allowed)?

Sent from my iPhone

Originally posted by Justin Miyashiro:

Would we consider this HCE if AP said “Draw 3” before executing his Brainstorm?

No. If the opponent confirms the draw, it's a GRV.

IPG 2.3:
A player commits an error in the game that cannot be corrected by only publicly available information and does so without his or her opponent’s permission.

Edited Isaac King (July 5, 2017 03:09:20 AM)

Originally posted by Isaac King:

Originally posted by Christopher Windmill:

I'd assume that you would have to let the error occur as the effect is controlled by their opponent and so they are responsible for ensuring that the effect is applied properly

Leovold's ability isn't a trigger, Albert isn't allowed to try and see if Niels forgets about it. Both players are responsible for maintaining a legal game state.

Precisely, if we step in before at least the LEC stage then we haven't given the Leovold player the opportunity to stop the error occurring as his responsibility. It's really an investigation question I would say here to determine if the Leovold player didn't realise he had to enforce it as well or whether they are fishing for errors. If it was a trigger (and its not but for the purposes of clarity) they would still have to step in as the owner of the trigger though - you can forget your opponents triggers but not your own so they would still have a responsibility to act to stop the infraction from occurring.